Upgraded from 300 to 900, not getting minimum speed guarantee

[#1]

No guarantee it will help, but worth a try, cheaper than buying a replacement PC which I'm putting off doing.

I added some extra detail to my previous post, be interesting if you have different drivers. 

[#2]

@dmurray0 unless your PC has a USB 3.0 port, then I'm afraid the USB ethernet adapter is not going to improve matters much. USB 2.0 has a theoretical max of 480Mb.

[#3]

I am a tad confused here over what’s the real issue.

It understandably started off as a concern that the service was not delivering the 1Gb speed which was purchased.  That was proved to be unfounded by connecting the PC direct to the ONT - the service is delivering 1Gb.

Putting things back as they were, the same laptop is now performing less well.  Does that really matter?  The acid question is will that one device going a little bit faster really make a meaningful difference to the connectivity experience?

The real point (if there is a meaningful one) of a residential service delivering 1Gb is that multiple users can concurrently enjoy high speed connectivity - not every single device attaining 1Gb throughput.

If what you have does what you need … don’t get sucked into artificial obsolescence … it’s just another means of parting you from your hard earned cash.

[#4]

@Townman 

I think you miss read post 23

Just tested my laptop plugged directly into the router with the same ethernet cable and hit the full 1Gbps on FAST so problem must be somewhere from within the PC?

So I read the OP has a Dell PC and a laptop, neither have been connected directly to the ONT. He tried a second laptop (post 25) to the router, that also hit the full speed.

Depending on this Dell PC usage the missing speed may not be noticed.

@dmurray0 

Sorry I should have thought more carefully before recommending a USB dongle.

Edit: having a 1Gb network interface does not necessarily mean you'll achieve that speed. I have a raspberry pi 3b with a 1GB ethernet port but due to hardware restrictions it only ever achieves up to 320 Mbps on a speedtest.

[#5]

Name : Ethernet
InterfaceDescription : Intel(R) 82579LM Gigabit Network Connection
DriverVersion : 12.12.140.22
DriverInformation : Driver Date 2015-02-15 Version 12.12.140.22 NDIS 6.30

Trying to download a newer driver off Intel site  and getting the error "No Intel Network Connections found on this computer. No drivers were installed."

[#6]

@dmurray0 

Given that is a 1Gb NIC, the bottle neck is probably somewhere else.

Sorry that I did not get back to you on the monitoring question ... the issue headed off in other directions, probably worth returning to the consideration of does that machine have enough guts to handle data faster.  The pinch pints are...

• NIC - that is 1GB I doubt that a change in drivers will make a difference
• Processor - what is it
• Memory - how much does it have
• Disk - how fast is the driver, how fragmented is it

Try running the speed tests with task manager running on the resources tab ... and watch the graphs for each of the above to see which (if any) max out.

[#7]

USB Adapter arrived yesterday without any increase in speed and sent back.

Regarding spec:

• Processor - what is it - Intel Core i7-2600 CPU @ 3.40GHz
• Memory - how much does it have - Type DDR3
  Size 16384 MBytes
  Channels # Single
  DRAM Frequency 665.1 MHz
• Disk - how fast is the driver, how fragmented is it - FCS-240GB (SSD)
  Heads 16
  Cylinders 29,185
  Tracks 7,442,175
  Sectors 468,857,025
  SATA type SATA-III 6.0Gb/s
  Device type Fixed

Assume the PC is causing the slowdown somewhere, just can't see where ?

[#8]

Does Task manager performance offer any clues?

You have proven that the service delivered is to specification: as asked before, though a niggle, does this really make a meaningful difference to the use of the service your PC?  Is the effort being expended worth the minimal difference you'll gain?

[#9]

CPU   appears to be high when running it ? Still can get online etc but thought when I seen the offer I'd go for it. Kids all have full 900mb available and I'm the only PC in the house with not full speed.

[#10]

That tells me that the PC is not saturating the NIC (network) but it is hammering the disk and the CPU.  Would be interesting to see the user / kernel loads spilt on the CPU.

Look at defragmenting the disk.

Make sure as little as possible little else is running on the machine.

You have though somewhat reached the point of proving that the machine does not have the guts to drive the connection to its full capacity.  But what's the real issue?  The connection is not holding up what your machine can do ... it is holding itself up ... and would it being different make any real material difference to what you do?  I suggest not and that you are probably spending time and becoming stressed over something which will make minimal difference ... unless you you really want to go spend £££s on a brand new high spec PC.

[#11]

@dmurray0 

If you are adventurous, have no particular requirement for a Window system you could look at https://www.linuxmint.com/ 

The OS allows you to run it from a USB stick so you can test the features without the need of a full upgrade.

One advantage is it will run on older hardware that's had it's day for microsoft products.

[#12]

The difficult question is what is slowing this down - the hardware of the software?

Again I ask the question - beyond academic curiosity what’s the real benefit being pursued here?